Jeff Jones of the Belleville News-Democrat<\/a> shared on X that the current plan for St. Louis is to “primarily” roll with Pag\u00e9s and Herrera behind the plate with Pozo more as a right-handed bench bat and backup first baseman at this time. <\/p>\nThe Cardinals veteran certainly is someone to watch this season![\"St.](\"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/01kn622xbhfcr7vcew71.jpg\" "\\"St.")
<\/p>\n
Feb 16, 2026; Jupiter, FL, USA; St. Louis Cardinals catcher Yohel Pozo (63) walks on the field during spring training workouts at Roger Dean Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Reinhold Matay-Imagn Images | Reinhold Matay-Imagn Images<\/p>\n
“[Oli Marmol] said this morning that the Cardinals will primarily split up the catching between Pag\u00e9s and Herrera for the time being with Pozo more in the mix as a bench bat and the RH backup at first. He is, for the moment, in the lineup he has sketched out for the first day in Detroit,” Jones wrote. <\/p>\n
Pozo was very good in camp and earned his job on the big league roster. But Crooks’ time is coming and soon enough he’s going to make it very difficult for St. Louis to keep him down in the minors. So far this season, he has played in three games in Triple-A and is slashing .364\/.462\/.909 with two homers, four RBIs, two walks, four runs and a 1.371\tOPS. <\/p>\n
Crooks played in just 15 games in the majors in 2025 but the Cardinals are going to have to give him a shot at some point. Leo Bernal is another elite catcher prospect on the big league doorstep. Rainiel Rodriguez’s time will come as well. At the end of the day, there is so much catching talent that everyone isn’t going to get the opportunity they likely should. <\/p>\n
Right now, Crooks is down in the minors and and Pozo is up in the big leagues. But if Crooks can continue to play like he has to begin the season, he’s going to make a compelling case for those two roles to shift. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"One position group to watch for the St. Louis Cardinals throughout the 2026 season is going to be…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":657999,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2403],"tags":[5,160,4,673,67,4311,4310],"class_list":{"0":"post-657998","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-st-louis-cardinals","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-cardinals","10":"tag-mlb","11":"tag-st-louis","12":"tag-st-louis-cardinals","13":"tag-stlouis","14":"tag-stlouiscardinals"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/657998","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=657998"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/657998\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/657999"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=657998"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=657998"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=657998"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}